Jason Robert Brown

A really fun show tonight in Fargo, my first time in North Dakota. The company asked me to do a two-act show, so I had to pull out some material that I don’t usually do in order to fill a whole evening by myself. Some surprises below! All Things In Time I Could Be In Love With Someone Like You She Cries Long Long Road No Way Now If I Didn’t Believe In You I’m In Bizness [as a solo! I got inspired to do it because there are two pianists (@sometimeskelly and @pianoleo) on Twitter who both transcribed myRead More »

Broadway By The Bay invited me up last weekend to meet the cast of their upcoming production of “13” and to do a concert and masterclass at the Bayside Performing Arts Center in San Mateo. The masterclass was a lot of fun; six really talented singers (including Riley Costello from the Broadway cast of 13!) doing some beautiful work. And then about 400 people showed up for the concert that night, which was my first concert in the San Francisco area (and it was apparently a big hit with the locals). All Things In Time I Could Be In LoveRead More »

Joyful greetings! A lot of firsts in this month’s update! This weekend marks my first concert in San Francisco! (Well, San Mateo, to be precise, but close enough.) I’ll be doing a show on Saturday, July 24 at Broadway By The Bay‘s Bayside Performing Arts Center starting at 7 pm. I hope I’ll see you there – please click here for more information! Then I’m spending next week in beautiful Fargo, North Dakota, my first time ever visiting there. The historic Fargo-Moorhead Community Theatre is producing 13 this summer, and to help them celebrate, I’ll be doing a concert onRead More »

In the best improvisation, it’s the soloist’s job to navigate the maze between the beginning and the end, with nothing but the most rudimentary map. I’m always amazed to hear improvisers like Fred Hersch, who can find impossibly elegant but unexpected routes through that maze. Thelonious Monk, on the other hand, gives the joyful sense of careering into corners and crashing into dead ends along the way. One of my favorite jazz players is Michel Petrucciani, who starts out with two screws and a washer and gradually builds a bulldozer that flattens all the walls. I’m not really in thoseRead More »

Those of you who are not totally bored of my rantings about copyright infringement may enjoy a piece I wrote for the NY Times theater blog. Click here to read it, and thanks to Eric Piepenburg for asking me to continue the conversation on such a large platform. You will note many of the same annoying commenters from my first blog on this subject trolling about there, but I did get a very thoughtful and engaging email from an intellectual property lawyer at Stanford Law School, and I thought, in the interest of balance, that I would reprint it here.Read More »